


Thistle & Weeds

by lorax



Category: Big Love
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Incest, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Polygamy, Sibling Incest, Siblings, Underage Character, canonical non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:31:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/lorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Nicki had a half dozen brothers, but no one ever specified when they spoke to her about Alby.  She always knew who they meant, and they never meant anyone else."</i>  Nicki and Alby are too much alike, and always have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thistle & Weeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withalacrity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withalacrity/gifts).



> Written for [Yuletide 2011](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2011/profile), for [withalacrity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/withalacrity/profile), who asked for Alby/Nicki and Lura/Alby.  I hope this works for you, I'm sorry I didn't work in the threesome! Happy Yuletide.
> 
> Additional warnings for: incest (non explicit), underage (non explicit, both below 18, as well as canonical underage references), implied violence, in-character homophobia, implied canonical non-con/dubious consent.
> 
> Thank you to (Redacted until reveal) and (redacted) for the timely betas!

  
  
**Thistle & Weeds**   
  
  
_“But take the spade from my hands,  
and fill in the holes you've made.  
But plant your hope with good seeds.  
Don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds."  
\-- Mumford & Sons, "Thistle & Weeds"_   
  


 

Nicki was six, and she hated the winter.  The bite of the cold air sliced through the thin cotton of her dress, turning her skin to goosebumps and shivers.  She hugged her arms around herself as she stood on the very edge of the porch, where the wind whipped by without breaking against the worn slats of the house.  

She could hear the thin sound of her father's guitar. His voice was leading the family in a song she'd heard a thousand times before, and had never learned to love, though she knew better than to say that anymore. Her Mama just sighed at her complaints, and her Papa looked hurt and everyone else stared at her like she'd said a dirty word, when she knew she hadn't. She'd learned dirty words from her cousin, and stowed them all away so she could think them, but never ever say them.

Her hair had twisted free of its braid and blew in front of her eyes.  Nicki watched the colorless compound through the veil of her hair, filling in the blank blonde spaces with people and places she'd never see outside of the children's books hidden beneath her bed.  Wanda had gotten them for her, and Nicki had never thought to ask where, or why, just poured over the pages of stories about stars and lions and moons that never once mentioned the Prophet.  Only Alby knew she had them, and Alby kept her secrets the way Nicki kept his.

The wood behind her creaked a warning before Nicki felt her brother's hand on her shoulder.  "You'll catch cold, Nicki," Alby said.  His lip was split and when Nicki turned, she pressed the tip of a thin, icy finger to the seam, making him flinch though he didn't move her hand.  "Why aren't you inside?"

"I hate it inside," Nicki said, dropping her arm to her side again.

"Mama's waiting, she's made biscuits."

"I hate biscuits," Nicki said.

Alby perched on the porch railing, legs not long enough to touch the wood slatted floor and swinging idly back and forth instead. He held out his hand, and Nicki took it, curling in against him as he hugged her.  "No you don't."

She didn't, but she should, Nicki decided.  She felt like hating things.  "I hate it here."

"This is home, you can't just hate it."

"I can so," Nicki said, poking him in the side repeatedly until he finally made a grab for her hands with one of his.  With his free hand, Alby tickled her ribs until she laughed and then stopped, and she turned to look back.  "Can we go somewhere else, someday?"

"Where do you want to go?"

Nicki didn't know.  "Texas," she said, because there had been a man her Papa knew from there, and she remembered the name.

"Okay.  One day, we'll go to Texas.  We'll travel all over."

Nicki looked at him, narrowing her eyes the way their Mama did when Nicki was fibbing.  "I want to be like Papa, when I grow up.  He can go anywhere, and everyone listens to him."

Alby let go of her, and Nicki rubbed at her arms, cold again but too stubborn to say so.  "You can't be like Papa, Nicki."

"Why not?"  Nicki already knew.  Because she was a girl, so she was supposed to be like Mama, and like her other mothers.

"Just because."

"If I can't be like Papa, then neither can you!" Nicki told him.

Alby stood.  "Come on.  You should come inside."

"I don't want to.  You can't make me!  You can't make me do anything!" Nicki yelled, balling up her fist and punching at his chest. Her chest felt tight and her eyes felt hot. Nicki wasn't sure why she was so mad, or where it all rushed in from to fill her up suddenly, but she felt all full of it, and there was no where for it to go but out, and Alby was the only one there.

Alby let her, and he said nothing, just watching.  She hit him again and then stood still, breathing hard.  "I'll stay outside with you," Alby said finally, and Nicki felt mean for hitting him, but she didn't say that she was sorry, and Alby didn't seem to mind.

She sat beside him on the porch steps until her knees knocked together when she shivered, and finally Nicki stood up.  She offered Alby her hand and he took it, letting her lead him back inside.  
***

Nicki was nine, and she itched to be outside, in the sunshine. The windows of the Big House were open, but the barest breeze drifted through the small bathroom window to ruffle her sleeves as she watched her brother painstakingly spreading shaving cream on his whisker-less face. "Alby doesn't even need to shave," she said.

"Your brother is becoming a man, he'll have to soon enough," her father told her placidly. "Your mother is doubtlessly in need of your help, Nicolette."

Nicki sat on the edge of the tub and hid her face against her arm so she could make a face. She'd spent all morning with her Mama in the kitchen, restocking the pantry and canning fruit, and she was supposed to come back to bake, after lunch. She could go outside, and say she was going to Mama, but she stayed where she was, watching as Roman guided Alby's hand carefully.

A little nick of red appeared, bleeding through the white foam. "You've already cut yourself. You shouldn't be allowed sharp things," Nicki said

"Nicki, shut up," Alby hissed before he tried to scrape the other cheek. "This doesn't have anything to do with you!"

"Take care when you speak to your sister, Alby. She is a precious jewel, like your mother. You can't expect her to understand things as you would." Roman smiled at Nicki. "But be kind to your brother, Nicki."

Her father spent an hour every few days with them, and then went off to his other business, his other children. Nicki didn't know how he could know anything about what she would understand. But he was the Prophet, so he must. "Let me do it, Papa. Show me how," she asked.

Roman gave her an indulgent smile. "Very well, come here, Nicki." He gathered up a blade Nicki knew was too dull to cut, but she pretended she didn't. He sat on a low stool, face slathered with foam, and placidly tried to tell her what to do. Nicki had already listened though, and she knew. She bit her lip as she smoothed the dull blade along her father's cheeks, over his throat. He'd already shaved that day, and the blade was too dull to make any difference, but Nicki was careful. Even if it could have cut, she wouldn't have nicked him, she was sure of it.

When she was done, her father kissed her forehead, and she looked up to see Alby watching, something so sad in his face that for a moment, Nicky felt bad for having asked her father. Then she remembered Alby had said to shut up, and that no one had asked her if she wanted to know how to shave, and she wasn't sad for him, anymore. "I was better than Alby," she said confidently.

Her Father laughed. "Very steady hands, Nicolette. If only God had seen fit to make you a boy. Such a force for the faith you could have been." He ruffled her hair and picked up a piece of toilet paper, pressing it to the nick on Alby's cheek, which he still hadn't wiped clean. "Keep practicing, Albert," he ordered as he left.

Alby stared down at the blades on the counter. "I would have gotten it."

"Only after you cut off your nose," Nicki said.

Alby grunted and looked at her. "I would have gotten it," he said again.

Alby looked sad, and angry, and something else Nicki couldn't recognize, and she felt badly, again. She didn't know what to say, though, because she'd seen Alby's hand shake, so she thought he probably wouldn't have done it properly the second time, either.

She stood on tiptoe instead, kissing his forehead in the same spot Papa had kissed her. "I'll make you a pie?" she offered, because when her Papa was sad, that's what her mothers did.

Alby's mouth twitched a little, and he let her take his hand, draw him away from the bathroom and toward the kitchen. She didn't tell him that Mama had told her she had to make the pies that morning, but Nick thought he already knew, anyway.  
***

Nicki was fourteen, and her bones ached like her grandpa's did in the dead of winter, though it was summer.  Growing pains, her mother dismissed it as, but Nicki sometimes thought it was her bones, stretching to break past her skin and leave her bleeding and hideous.   _Always so dramatic, Nicolette,_ her Mama said.  Nicki hated how easily everything she was could be dismissed as somehow wrong. The things she thought, the way she acted, the way she spoke - everything was wrong. She was too dramatic, too harsh, and too needy; she was demanding, too bold, and too confrontational. Everything she did was too much, and Nicki was already tired of trying to be something else.

She shared a room with three sisters, and on nights when she couldn't stand it anymore, she snuck into Alby's room, that he shared with no one, and stared into the narrow oval mirror on his wall until Alby came up to bed, or her sisters came to drag her out.  They always said they hadn't, but Nicki knew they told Mama where Nicki was.   _You're too old to spend all your time with your brother, people will talk,_ Adaleen had told her.  Nicki hadn't known what it was people would talk about, really.  They talked about everything, as far as she had been able to tell. She wasn't sure if she cared too much about the things they said about her, or if she didn't care at all. Sometimes, it felt like both, and that never made any real sense.

Nicki knew now, though, and she hated it.  She felt like from the day she'd started to bleed beneath her skirts, she'd been on display and just waiting for someone to come along and snatch her away because they liked the price she'd been put on sale for.

Nicki prayed every night, and tried so hard to believe, but she never felt the peace of God's love, or the purity of His purpose.  Her Papa was the Prophet, and the will of God lay within him.  She _knew_ that, she believed it, but she couldn't feel it.  Everyone else seemed to feel God, and Nicki resented them for having it when she couldn't.  Most days, Nicki didn't feel anything but restlessly angry and endlessly stifled.

She heard the click of the door behind her and didn't turn, meeting Alby's eyes in the mirror instead.  He was too-pale and sweating, the heat outside seeping through walls and pressing down on them.  "What's wrong?" she asked.  "Is it true Papa talked to you about my Sealing?" Nicki demanded in the same breath.

She didn't turn until Alby collapsed on the bed, sitting with his head in his hands.  "Alby!  What?  He did, didn't he?  I knew it, I can't-"

"It's not about _you_ , Nicki.  Not this time.  Not entirely," Alby said, and Nicki froze, hearing a new note in his voice, rough and filled with something bitter and disjointed.  "What is wrong with me, sister?" he asked.

"There's nothing wrong with you," Nicki defended, automatic and abrupt.  She wasn't sure that was true.  There was a list of things wrong with Nicki, and she knew Alby felt half of them too.  "Why on earth would you ask that?"

"Papa's picked out my first wife," Alby said.

Nicki's throat felt tight and her chest too-heavy.  "Who?"

Alby laughed, no trace of real humor in the sound.  "Does it matter?"

Nicki crossed her arms over her chest.  "Is she pretty?"

"I think so.  Maybe.  I don't know."

"Is she prettier than me?" Nicki demanded.

Alby looked up, eyes meeting hers.  "No one is prettier than you."

It wasn't true.  Nicki was all straight lines and too-skinny legs.  She had yet to grow any kind of breasts and when she stared into her own reflection, it turned into shapes that made up a too-strong jaw, a too-narrow face.  But she knew when Alby was lying, and she knew that to him, at least, it was true.  "I'm sure Papa will have chosen a good woman for you."

"He could choose the most perfect woman alive, and it wouldn't matter."  Alby swallowed hard, and Nicki could see his throat working.  She could almost taste the bile he was swallowing, she felt the tears shining in his eyes pricking behind her own eyelids.  "What have I done that I am so cursed, Nicki?  Why am I like this?  What is WRONG with me?" Alby demanded.

Nicki didn't have any answers.  She couldn't even acknowledge what it was he meant, because somehow that would make it too true for the both of them.  "It's not real, Alby.  It's not your purpose.  Your purpose will be made clear." It was the sort of thing her mothers told her, and it never made Nicki feel any better, but she had nothing better to say, so she mouthed the empty words anyway.

"Just as your purpose will come clear and of comfort to you, one day?"  Alby ran a hand through his hair, and bit his lip hard enough that Nicki imagined he tasted the tang-copper of blood on his tongue.  "I'll lie with a wife and beget many grandsons for Papa, while you submit to your husband and do the same, and one day it will be easy?  It will be natural, and the unnatural will have been made whole?" Only his hands moved as he spoke, the rest of him strung tight as a piano wire.

"We're not unnatural," Nicki said.  She bit her lip too, tasting the blood.  "I'm _NOT_ ," she said.

"I fear that I am.  And that you are.  And that it will never matter to anyone but us."

Nicki turned away from him, back to him, eyes on the narrow mirror.  "Papa did speak to you, didn't he?  About me."

She saw Alby's nod in the mirror.  "In the spring, after your birthday."

Nicki shuddered.  There were young men who looked at her, and she wondered if maybe she could be happy with them, but she felt no joy in the prospect.  She'd prayed to want the things she was supposed to, but it never worked, not for her.  Not for Alby.

She reached up suddenly, fingers jerking open the buttons of her dress, tearing it open and stripping it off.  Behind her, Alby watched, but said nothing.  Nicki stared at the mirror so hard that the reflections blurred, Alby's face merging with hers until she couldn't tell them apart.  She stripped off her underthings, bit by bit, letting them pool at her feet until she stood in only thick socks, her hair loose down her back.  "Do you really think I'm beautiful?"

"Yes."

The reply was instant and honest, and Nicki shut her eyes as Alby leaned forward, his hand - broader than hers, and somehow so much warmer, trailed down her back, along her spine and lower, making her shudder and branding her skin with heat.  "Do you _feel_ when you look at me, Alby, the way that you can't for your wife-to-be?"

"Would it be any better if I did?" Alby asked.  "Trade one sin for another, what does it gain us?"  His fingers tangled in her long hair, and for a moment he pressed against her bare back, still clothed, fitting himself against her.  Nicky felt less alone and more lonely in that instant than she ever had.

She reached behind her, tugging at his hair and then turning, abrupt enough to startle him.  When she kissed him, it tasted of both their blood and she dug her fingers into his neck to leave a mark as his hand curved a bruise into her hip.

Down the hall a chair scraped against the floor and they jumped apart Nicki jerked her clothes back on as Alby looked away.  "Nicki. . . we can never-"

"I will never tell a soul."  Nicki looked back at him, met his eyes, and then she rushed from the room.

In her room with her sisters, they chattered about Alby's Sealing to come, and Nicki picked up a pair of scissors from the sewing basket by her bed, gripping them tight, the tip digging into her thigh without cutting through to the skin.

When the others had gone to bed, she stood in front of her window and held the length of her hair in one hand, slicing it off in a ragged clump and watching the long strands drift down to the ground.  
***

Nicki was fifteen, and she missed the winters, where the fields needed no tilling or reaping and the days passed slower and lazier, bundled beneath the blankets.  No one expected much of her, and now they expected everything, and she resented it.

"You brought this on yourself, Nicki.  I've told you a thousand times to learn how to make the best of things, but you just never could listen.  You always had to have it your way.  The Prophet could have gone another two years before your Sealing, if you hadn't been so willful all of the time."  Adaleen stopped, rolling pin in one hand and a half flattened sheet of dough stretched across the counter in front of her.  She had a smear of flour on one cheek, and a few strands of hair had escaped her long braid.  She looked apple-cheeked and motherly, the perfect image of what Nicki should want to be.  "Your sisters were so much easier.  But you and Alby never could just take things as they came and smile about it."

Nicki's braid was perfect, and her skin was clean.  She'd helped knead the dough, she knew how to butcher a pig and make breakfast for fifteen, and she felt like a parody of what she'd been taught to be every second of every day since the moment she learned there was a different world for girls and boys.  "I stand up for what I believe in.  You and Papa taught me that."

"There's a difference between standing and stubbornness, Nicolette.  When the storm rolls through, it rips the roofs off of the houses and the roots of the trees from the earth for trying to stand firm against the inevitable.  You have to let it wash over you, sometimes.  You have to submit, and take pride in it," Adaleen said.  "Therein lies your joy, and your salvation.  If you don't learn to do that, something will come along and knock you right off your feet, and someday you might not be able to stand up again.  And God help you then honey, because I won't be able to."  Adaleen bent her head, strong arms rolling the dough out again into careful, even sheets.  "That's the difference between you and your brother."

"No one asks _him_ to change who he is?" Nicki asked, voice flat.  She picked off a bit of flour from the edge of the dough and watched it drift to the floor like dust.

"That's not true, and you know it," her mother said, bitter edge to her voice for just a moment.  Nicki felt closer to her in those moments than she did at any other.  It slipped away again as Adaleen shrugged.  "No one is asking you to change who you are, Nicki. We just want you to be as God intended you to be, not what your willfulness leads you to be. Alby learned to bend.  He had to.  You should learn from his wisdom."

"Maybe Alby's just already been broken.  Maybe we all are," Nicki said, and her shoulders hunched as her mother looked up, eyes older than her years and too-hard.  "Mama, I'm just saying-"

"I know what you were saying, Nicolette.  I'm done talking about this.  Your Prophet has chosen your path for you, and if you won't yield to my wisdom, you will surely listen to his.  Now make yourself useful and go and tend to the washing."

Nicki's hand curled around the edge of the table, and she wanted to pound her fist against the edge of it until it bled or the table shattered, or something - anything - changed.  "I can't do this, Mama.  I swear, I can't do this. You have to talk to Papa.  Another year, or someone else - anyone else."

Adaleen slammed the pin down onto the table and it vibrated for a moment and then went still and quiet.  "There is _nothing_ I can do for you, Nicolette.  Do you understand that?  Nothing."  She stilled, drawing a deep breath and then going on, like nothing at all was wrong and her daughters weren't given away like fattened calves, ready for the carving.  "Thank the good Lord your hair's grown back in before the Sealing," she said.

Nicki swallowed back a sob or a scream, not sure which it was, and she nodded, quick and too sharp, almost making herself dizzy.  When she spun away from the table and stumbled toward the door, the world turned and turned and she felt like she was free-falling.  When it steadied again, nothing had changed.  She couldn't remember if she'd really expected that it would.  
***

Nicki was sixteen, and she'd counted the days since her last cycle a hundred times, but couldn't hide from the truth anymore, no matter how she tried.  "You're pregnant," Wanda said, her hands knitting a scarf that stretched on and on and on without end, but she never seemed to notice.

"I hate him," Nicki said.  "I'm having his child, and I hate him."  He touched her, and her insides crawled and her mind screamed. She wanted to lash out and push until he was far away and could never touch her again.

"He's not all bad," Wanda tried to say, voice weak.  At Nicki's glare she ducked her head.  "I'm sorry, Nicki.  Maybe if you're a mother, it will. . . give you something else to think about."  She peeked up again and smiled, twisted and small.  "Maybe you could get fat and he'll find a new wife."

Nicki laughed, startled.  That was why she befriended Wanda, why she spoke with her and tended to her.  Her mother had warned her away, but Nicki had never listened well to warnings, and she liked Wanda.  Wanda was broken, but she never seemed to mind.  She wore it openly.  Nicki envied her that.  She wasn't sure where her damage was, but even if Nicki knew, she could never wear it so plainly. Nicki could never let anything stand in the open, untempered by her own deceptions.

"Your brother was here, yesterday," Wanda said.  "He worries about you."

Nicki had a half dozen brothers, but no one ever specified when they spoke to her about Alby.  She always knew who they meant, and they never meant anyone else.  "Not enough," she said, bitter without reason and slightly shamed for it. Alby had no more choice than she had, after all.

"Your father depends on him more and more.  I think. . . Nicki, I think he wants to see you Unsealed.  But now. . ."

Nicki bowed her head.  A hundred times she'd asked him, and now he tried, when it was too late.  When everything was different.  "After the baby's old enough.  Then I can."  For just a moment, she thought of the buses that ran through town, and the old woman who would give her a ride for a few dollars, the clinic two towns over that could make the baby inside her just a mistake she'd corrected.

She rejected it as soon as she thought of it, every core of belief she'd been raised to hold sacred making even the stray thought anathema and monstrous.  "Just a year.  I can survive a year."

Wanda reached a hand over, squeezing Nicki's.  "Nicki, my brother won't let you take the baby, no matter what the Prophet says. I know JJ."

"It's his baby.  Let him have it."  Nicki's heart hurt and her mother's voice echoed in her head, even as she said it, but she pushed it away, buried it deep.  She would get out, and if that's what she had to do, she would do it.  "I'll die if I stay," she said.  "I know it's dramatic, but-"

"No," Wanda said, sad and resigned.  "No.  I believe you."  
***

Nicki was 23, and she'd paid her dues. There wasn't anyone at Juniper Creek who didn't know about the Prophet's daughter, and her failed marriage, her Unsealing and the daughter she'd left behind. Everywhere she went, everyone she spoke to, the knowledge hung over her head and in the air between them. She never made excuses, and they never asked for the truth. The truth wouldn't have changed anything - miserable or no, she'd left her place and her child and they would have judged her even if she'd come back beaten and broken. Nicki was neither of those things, and that just made it worse, to the women of the compound.

Even her mother had hugged her tight, welcomed her home, but said _oh, Nicolette_ in a tone that said she thought Nicki was, once again, led astray by her own willfulness.

But the compound was secretive, and the things they freely told one another, no one would tell anyone on the outside. Nicki's secrets were all her own, and when Bill looked at her, he saw a sheltered compound girl, not yet Sealed and eager for a life away from Juniper Creek, and a way to help.

Bill Henrickson hadn't wanted a Grant, and Nicki knew that from the moment he came back, looking for someone to help him with his sick wife. Nicki knew everything about him, as soon as he left. She spent three hours digging beneath Alby's skin, until he told her everything he knew. He hadn't wanted to tell her. _He's not one of us, Nicki,_ he'd warned.

Nicki had wanted to ask him why that was a bad thing, but she hadn't. Instead she'd brushed her hair until it shone, packed her clothes, and convinced Bill that she could help him. She'd helped care for JJ's mother, but she never said that was how she'd learned to care for the sick.

Nicki hadn't doubted her choices for a moment until Bill drew her into the bedroom of his rich house, his golden-haired daughter watching from down the hall as Bill introduced her to Barb.

Barbara Henrickson's head was wrapped in a scarf and she was thin and sickly, but there was something in her face that made Nicki want to shrink away, or straighten her spine and stare back. Nicki had spent most of her life not being the kind of woman she was meant to be, the sort of woman accepted at Juniper Creek. And when Barb looked at her, Nicki could tell that _compound trash_ was all she saw. For once, she did neither, and just smiled with a shyness she'd learnt from her sisters.

Barb smiled, and her hand was weak, but the way it squeezed Nicki's seemed genuine. "I can't begin to thank you enough for helping me. I just hope I won't be too much trouble."

"Barb isn't really used to taking help, just keeping her in bed is a trial," Bill said, and he smiled at Barb, rueful and accepting, as if that flaw were something he loved instead of something Barb should change.

"You make me out to be some kind of Type-A nutcase," Barb complained.

"Not at all, honey. I just want the best for you." Bill leaned to kiss her, and then dropped his arm across Nicki's shoulders. "Nicki doesn't mind, Barb, I promise."

"I want to help," Nicki promised. "Just tell me what you need."

Bill's arm was warm on her shoulders, and the house was cool from air conditioning, but not too cold. She could see the fixtures of the bathroom, gleaming and new, from where she stood. The linens were expensive and soft, the bedspread was a rich shade of red. "I'd like us to pray, if you don't mind, and give thanks for God bringing Nicki to us, in our hour of need, and for Barb's recovery."

"Of course," Nicki said, bending her head. She laced the fingers of one hand with Barb's, the others with Bill's. As he spoke to their Heavenly Father, Nicki pushed her heels into the thick carpet and decided that she was going to have this life, and this marriage, and forget the last had ever happened. She would start over, and everything would be different.  
***

Nicki was twenty-eight, and she imagined she knew what she was doing, until a wind blew past and everything changed.  Her brother was getting married again, and she saw something familiar and focused in his eyes whenever he looked at Lura.

When her mother told her Alby was taking a third wife, Nicki had smiled against the phone and said something sly about what a special woman she must be, voice heavy with innuendo Adaleen ignored with her usual brisk efficiency.  Nicki had imagined another mouse of a woman, her eyes downcast and Alby never quite looking square at her as he was Sealed.

Lura was tall and striking, and the warmth in her smile seemed a careful facade.  She'd lived away from the compound, and Nicki couldn't tell if she believed the compound was where she belonged, or if it was what she settled for.  Her sister-wives watched her nervously, and Lura knew it.  When she told Nicki how much she loved them, Nicki could spot it for a lie, but a facile one, and she was left wondering if Lura let her see, and what else she was hiding if so.

Nicki resented the woman, with her soft hair and clear skin, and wasn't sure why.  The gray skies threatened to turn to rain, and the celebrants drifted inside one by one.  Nicki willfully stayed outside, waiting for the first drops of rain.

"Your brother cares a great deal for you," Lura said from behind her, and Nicki gritted her teeth at having been caught unaware of where she was.  "He's very happy you're here.  We're just sorry to see your husband couldn't come as well."

"Bill is very busy, he doesn't have time to flock to every third wife's Sealing at a moment's notice," Nicki said.

Lura just smiled.  "I'm sure he is," she said smoothly.  "It must be very difficult, your life outside.  So complicated."

"We manage," Nicki said.

"I'm sure you do.  But you must long for simplicity, sometimes.  For the things you can't have?"  Lura didn't wait for an answer, turning her face up toward the skies.  "I lived on the outside, for a while.  I trained as a nurse.  I was always surprised you hadn't done the same, when I heard how you'd gone to tend to Bill's wife.  Those must not have been the skills they wanted from you."

Nicki ignored the censure she heard lurking behind the words.  "You'll never have a real marriage, you know.  Not with Alby.  It's not how he works.  You should just get used to being an unnecessary accessory now, and save yourself the trouble later."

"And you know all about how marriage works, the second time around?" Lura said.  She shrugged.  Her shoulders were too broad, Nicki thought, petty and aware of it.  They were almost manly.  Maybe that was what Alby saw.  "We've worked out many things.  We understand one another."

"You'll never understand Alby."

"Never understand him as well as you do?"  Lura smiled.  "I think you underestimate me."  She stepped in closer, ignoring the first fat drops of rain that were falling from the sky to splatter against her red hair, her broad shoulders.  "I remind him of you, you know.  That's what he told me, when we were courting."

Nicki couldn't think of any more blatant warning that someone was a liar than to know someone looked at them and saw traces of Nicki.  "I highly doubt that."

"It's true.  I have a lovely back, you know.  So do you."  

Nicki felt her face flush red with old shame and new hate.  "What are you getting out of this?"

"What does any woman get from marriage?  Eternity, family, security.  Marriage is give and take, and Father gives me what I need.  I give him what he wants."

"A facade?" Nicki suggested, forcing a smug smile that she didn't really feel.

"It's as real as anything else around here, Nicki.  It's all lies and layers, and we choose which ones we see, and which ones we don't."  Lura tossed her braid over her shoulder.  "I really am glad you're here, Nicolette.  It wouldn't have been the same without you."  She turned to walk toward the house.  "You should come in out of the rain."

Nicki stood in the open air as the fat drops turned to a pelting sheet, water plastering her clothes to her skin and making her teeth chatter with chill.  She stayed where she was until Alby rushed out, a blanket in his arms and a chastising scolding on his lips as he ushered her inside.  Nicki's forced smile lightened and turned genuine as she saw Lura's smile was as false as her own while she watched Alby dry the dampness from Nicki's hair.  
***

Nicki was 29, and she lived for the winter.  The summer heat made her clothes hang too heavy and her long hair suffocating.  Her body was lean and hard and she swallowed a pill every day to try to feel as if it were her own, and as if she still knew the shape and feel of it, and how much of it made up _Nicki_ and not _family_.

She stacked her secrets on top of secrets and in the quiet moments, when she wondered if she was happy, she opened them up and looked into the moments she buried and wondered how Bill could think he loved her, and not see her.  She could point to the places on her body where her skin had been tighter, before Cara Lynne, the marks the birth had left, the wideness of her hips that hadn't been there before.  But Bill never saw, Barb never asked.  Standing beside Margene, Nicki felt gaunt and narrow against her lushness, and she didn't resent it so much as wonder at it, because she'd never been lush, but she'd been a mother long before Bill brought her here, and no one looked hard enough to see.

She loved her boys, even if Nicki sometimes wondered if she had any idea what that meant, or if it was true.  She'd die for them, but Nicki looked into Wayne and Ray's faces - into all of their faces - and she saw Bill.  She saw something sincere and honest that she'd never had, and didn't know how to respond to.  They were small enough that Nicki knew they loved her, that they trusted her, that the believed in her.  But they wouldn't be young forever.  One day they'd realize that they had no trace of her hidden in their hearts, and they'd be better off for it.  She loved her sons, but she looked at them and saw _Bill's sons_ first.

Cara Lynn looked nothing like Nicki, until you met her eyes and then Nicki saw nothing but herself, her past, her mistakes.  Cara Lynn was a liar. She was guarded, she had no faith and no center.  She _was_ Nicki, and Nicki loved her for it, but part of her wanted to never, ever have to look at her again and see her own flaws staring back.  She'd left her baby and told herself she was leaving JJ's child, but the truth was that she'd left her daughter, the truest child of her heart, alone, unprotected, and unguided.

Nicki had never found answers for herself, she would never have been able to give them to Cara Lynn, either.  But Cara Lynn had been alone.  Even at her darkest, Nicki had never felt entirely alone.

She was a scorned woman, cast aside by her husband, living with her brother and his wives in a house that should belong to their Father, while the daughter she left stayed with the man she hated above anyone else on this earth.  "I'll send him away, Nicki," Alby said, coming up behind her as she watched JJ lead Cara Lynn away.  "You'll never have to see him again, and I'll invite her to stay.  I'll Seal her to-"

"You will do no such thing!" Nicki blurted, spinning and slapping hard at his face.

Alby lifted his hand, touched the vivid red print she'd left on his cheek.  "Temporarily, just as a pre-placement.  Just to keep her with us, Nicolette," he said.  "I'm trying to set it right."

"By dragging her away from her home for me, when I have no family, no husband, and no purpose?  What good will that do her?  What good will that do anyone?"

"You have a family, Nicki."  Nicki felt flush with shame and anger that had no place to go, no source to latch on to other than a past that she couldn't afford to look at, for fear it would claw its way further into her present and never let her go.  

She touched his red cheek, soft and regretful, as much an apology as Nicki could give him.  "Things can be different now, Nicki.  Papa's gone.  I say what goes.  Stay here.  With me.  With us."  Alby looked back at the porch of the Big House behind him, and Nicky followed his gaze, seeing Lura there, eyes hooded and arms crossed.  She smiled at Nicki and tossed her head, the gesture so reminiscent of their mother that it took Nicki a moment to realize it wasn't Adaleen Lura had mimicked, it was Nicki, who had taken it from the same source.  "Come inside."

Alby's arm curled around her waist, and for just a moment, Nicki let herself lean into him, follow him back inside.  "She's beautiful, isn't she?  Cara Lynn."

"Of course she is.  She looks like you," Alby said.

"Please don't say that," Nicki whispered, and they both fell quiet as Lura pulled the door open for them, kissed Alby on the cheek and swept a stray strand of hair away from Nicki's face, tucking it behind her ear.  
***

Nicki was thirty, and she doubted everything she'd ever learned.

Alby's face was bruised and his eyes dull with painkillers.  Lying in a hospital bed, he looked frail and too-slow, like a wounded animal waiting for the hunters to pick him off.  Nicki ached for him, and she hated him, and she envied him because he was lying still in a bed with police outside, and no one expected anything of him but to stay there and wait for judgment, now.  His voice slurred just a little as he spoke, and his head tipped back against the stark pillows.  Nicki watched the way his throat worked as he spoke instead of his face.  "Here to gloat, Nicki?"

Yes.  "I came for answers," Nicki answered.  "You tried to kill Mama, Alby."

"Yes."

"How could you do that?"  Nick hugged her bag in front of her chest, fingers tight on the strap.  "Was it because of what we said, at the Big House?  Because you know we didn't mean it.  You knew that, Alby, you had to!"

"You knew I meant it, Nicki.  You knew, and you saw the seed take root, and you didn't stop it because deep down, you wanted it to blossom.  You wanted the same things I do."

"I certainly never wanted anyone murdered!"

"No, that's too honest for you.  You just wanted them gone."  Alby went quiet, and for a moment, Nicki couldn't think of how to answer that.  "Do you ever wonder how much of what we are is chosen, and how much is destined?" he asked.

Nicki wondered that constantly, every step of the path she walked, every time she willfully stepped somewhere she knew her Papa, or Bill, or Barb would have told her was the wrong direction.  "I follow the plan God set for me," she said instead.

"You followed the plan Papa set for you, and then the path you chose for yourself, for good or evil."  Alby smiled, and it was too-soft, somehow, like how he'd smiled when they were young, and Nicki could still grab his hand beneath the table when she wanted to scream, and needed something to hold on to until it passed.  "Just like me," Alby said.

She'd brought herself to Bill, and then she'd taken herself away from him.  She'd broken with her family and her father, and then brought herself back to them, fluttering between them like a mite of dust caught in the eddies of breeze.  Nicki knew that much was true, it was everything else she doubted.  "I would have been a better man than you, Alby," Nicki told him.  She would have believed that, ten years ago.  She stepped in closer, unclutching her bag, tugging the thin, coarse blanket around him.

Alby laughed like it hurt, and his hand shook as it reached to thread through her hair, pulling it just enough that it tugged at her scalp and ached.  "You would have been the same man as me, little sister."

Nicki jerked away, leaving strands of hair tangled around his fingers.  Alby laid his hand against his face, blond strands trailing over his lips.  "Do you ever feel the cold, Nicolette?" he asked.

Nicki stopped two steps from his bed, not turning back to look at him.  She could see his face reflected in the checkered glass center of the door, and his eyes were still shut.  "All the time," she said.

"Do you like it?"

Nicki swallowed.  "I can't remember."

"We are strange creatures, cast out of the garden and never quite sure if we truly wanted to be allowed back in, aren't we?"  Alby's voice trailed off at the end, and he sounded so tired that Nicki wanted to crawl into bed beside him, wrap her limbs tight with his and try to find some dream where the pair of them made sense in the world around them.

"Yes," was all she said as she left the room.  The door swung heavy behind her, the crash of it closing sounded like something final.  
***

Nicki had stopped trying to trace the steps that brought her to where she was.  She'd worked too hard to forget all the doors she'd slammed shut, and all of the people she'd tried to be.  She took the seasons as they came, and she didn't love or hate them. They just passed her by, one after another again and again, and she didn't believe there was any real difference.

She'd never had answers, never been certain of anything, no matter how she'd tried to convince herself otherwise.

"He loved you," Lura said, and her voice trembled, her hands locked in front of her and her braid disheveled, as Nicki had never seen it.  "He loves you."

"Alby doesn't know what that means.  Neither do you." Neither did Nicki.

Lura's eyes met hers, clear and easy to read, as Lura has never really been.  "That's what he loved about us.  The shepherd loves the sheep who make up his flock, but it's the wolves who give him purpose."  Lura swallowed and looked down.  "I don't know what to do.  I need Father to care for me, as he did before.  As he does for you."

"Don't call him that, it sounds ridiculous," Nicki snapped.  

Lura went on as if Nicki hadn't spoken.  "He loves that man.  That lawyer.  He lies with him as he should lie with me.  It was all well and good when it was no one, and he could pretend, but it's all changed.  He's-"

"Unnatural," Nicki finished.  In her mind, she remembered Bill as he set her aside and told her she was too broken to be fixed, no matter if he'd taken her back.  She'd never forgotten that he knew.  Unnatural things she and Alby both were, in their ways.  They'd never been able to fix one another.  She wondered why they hadn't stopped trying long ago.  They were built for tearing down, not for building anything up. They couldn't heal themselves, healing anyone else had never even been an option.

Lura flinched, hands wringing again.  "I held his heart and his eyes more than my sisters ever could.  More than any woman ever could, except for you."   She stood, looking down at Nicki as she sat in the padded hotel chair.  "He told me his secrets, and I kept them, all of them.  Even now, he worries for you, resents you, cares for you.  It's close enough to love.  Teach me how you instilled that in him."

She turned and her hands moved, unbuttoning the stiff cotton of her dress, letting down the messy braid of her hair.  Pale skin revealed itself an inch at a time as Lura faced away from her, hair covering her back as Lura stripped.  There was no narrow oval of a mirror reflecting back, but Nicki could imagine one there.

Nicki felt like a ghost, lost in time and staring at herself, the shadow of her brother on the bed beside her, watching her again.  All the mistakes and moments she'd tried to forget, and they all always crept back up.  She blinked and suddenly _she_ was Alby, filling his shoes and his place and making the same mistakes he had, proving him right.  They were the same, beneath the skin, she and Alby.  Nicki was tired of denying it to herself.  

She trailed a hand down Lura's spine and remembered how Alby's hand had felt, how he trembled as his hand slid over her skin, leaving warmth in its wake.  "We're family, blood.  You can't force that.  You can't be something you're not.  If I knew how to change his nature, don't you think I would have done it already?"

"I never knew what you would do, Nicolette.  Alby knew.  I knew him, and he knew you, but there's parts of my husband I've never seen."

"I've seen them," Nicki whispered.  She knew them, she felt them, she had them.  The same empty spaces, the same ache for the loss of something they'd never quite had to begin with.  She stood, lifting her chin.  "Turn around."

Lura faced her and Nicki ran her fingers through Lura's hair, looping strands around her fingers and using them to pull the other woman closer. When Nicki kissed her, Lura's teeth caught on her lip, and Nicki shuddered, flash of heat and shame rolling through her, making her want to lash out and pull away at the same time.

"Father always did like to be bitten," Lura murmured, and Nicki shuddered again, as much revulsion as it was desire.  Her fingers tightened in Lura's light hair and Lura's fingers dug a bruise into Nicki's hip as she turned them both toward the bed.

Later, they lay facing opposite sides, and Nicki slid her hand over her own belly, thinking of all the betrayals she'd perpetrated, and where this fell on the scales of things she'd done wrong.  "We love," she said. She felt Lura roll to face her, though she didn't look.

"I'm sorry?" Lura said.

Nicki didn't know if it was an apology, or if Lura just didn't understand what she said, but she answered anyway.  "We love, me and Alby.  We just don't know how to do it without qualification." If they hadn't been siblings, if they hadn't had to hate one another, if she'd been a man - if a dozen things changed, they could have loved one another without the hate that came with it, and maybe that would have changed everything about who they were just enough to let them be happy. But there were always factors and qualifications, and neither of them had ever learned to give without taking first.

"I have to go.  Bill will be waiting.  Barb will take you to the shelter, you can stay there.  Alby will kill you for ruining his plans," Nicki said. She slid out of bed and dressing without looking at Lura.

"He wouldn't kill me," Lura said, and Nicki knew she was more hopeful than certain.  "He never would."

"He would never kill _me_ , Nicki said, aware that it was cruel, not even sure if it was true anymore.  "You, I don't know."

She thought she heard Lura crying as she left, but Nicki didn't stop until she was in her car, doors locked. She sat still, head bent, and then lifted both hands, fisting them and striking the wheel over and over until her hands ached.

It took five tries before Alby answered the phone, and Nicki didn't say hello.  She didn't tell him to stay away from Lura.  She just asked, feeling small and lost, "why didn't we go to Texas, Alby?"

Silence stretched out long enough that she thought he hung up, but he finally answered.  "I'd forgotten that."

"No, you didn't."

"No," he admitted.  "We are our parents' children, Nicolette.  We grew where we were planted.  There was never a chance of leaving, not really.  Was there?"

"No," Nicki said.  But she wasn't sure that was true, either, even as the line went dead against her ear.  
~~~

**Author's Note:**

> The timelines for Nicki were based around what basic ages I could construct using Cara Lynn's birth and canon events, but may be a little off.  I also, despite rewatching and googling, never saw a stated age difference between Alby and Nicki, so the assumption I was working on was 2-3 years.  It's possible I have that wrong, but hopefully it won't be too off-putting.


End file.
